


the queen in the north

by riften



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-02
Updated: 2019-06-02
Packaged: 2020-04-06 14:47:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19064812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riften/pseuds/riften
Summary: The game is finally won, and Queen Sansa gives a speech at her coronation.But all she can think about is those who are not there to hear it.





	the queen in the north

'The Queen in the North! The Queen in the North!' the northmen yelled, swords raised to the heavens.

Shivers ran up Sansa Stark's arms. She felt breathless, as giddy as a child. Yet she stood tall, with the new weight of a crown resting upon her temples.

She could hear her pulse so loud in her ears that it drowned out the chanting. She looked above the men and their swords and traced the patterns in the timbers of the roof as she collected herself. And she thought, _Mother, look. I am home._ She could almost laugh.

Instead, Sansa stared ahead, a cool smile fixed on her lips. Stones had crumbled from the walls around her, broken by battle and dragonfire. She could see a sliver of light spilling in through a crack in the door at the end of the hall, leading to the courtyard.

Once upon a time, a younger girl stood just outside that door, with bright auburn hair and flushed cheeks. She had just won a game of capture-the-flag, even though she never had been as good as the others at those sorts of games. Not as fast as Robb, nor as deft a climber as Bran. But Sansa recalled that victory well; how the girl had crept quietly through the grounds, hiding away and biding her time, before sprinting the last stretch, and leaping onto the stone wall to grab at the Stark flag.

Bent double, breathing deeply and laughing freely, she had turned, exhilarated, to face her competitors.

Sansa could still see their faces now. Jon's mock disappointment at her win, even though she suspected he had slowed down on purpose once he saw her running. Of course, Arya had been truly disappointed, huffing and dropping to her knees, arms crossed.

She could see Theon's half-impressed smirk as he leaned against the wall he usually stood at during these sorts of games, where he would spend his time throwing around sarcastic comments, but never fully committing to any game.

And then there was Robb, beaming up at her with pride.

When she thought of Robb, the memory faded away to another. A different morning out in the courtyard, when the late summer snows drifted about, settling on the crates of her and Arya's things, which were to be loaded into a cart and sent south with her. Robb had snowflakes melting in his hair that morning, as he hugged her goodbye and laid a kiss upon her brow.

In the Great Hall, Sansa bore no kisses on her brow, but a silver crown. The devoted faces that looked upon her were not kin, but her loyal northerners. And they chanted her new name.

The Queen in the North smiled. _This is my coronation_ , she reminded herself. _I should enjoy this._

'Thank you, my lords,' she said calmly. The men quieted, sheathing their swords and watching her expectantly. She lowered herself into the great chair, where Jon and Robb had once sat as kings of the North. Where, sometimes in her dreams, her father still sat, watching over their feasts.

She gestured for the northmen to sit. Most were familiar faces, of course. In the past months, they had fought for her, bled for her, pledged their swords to her cause. But she did not know any of them well yet.

Sansa raised her chin and began the speech she and Arya had prepared briefly on their journey back north. 'For thousands of years, the First Men ruled the North as their own land. They turned wilderness into land that could bear crops. They built our castles, and our godswoods.'

As she spoke, she looked at her bannermen in the front rows. Manderly, Reed, Hornwood, Cerwyn, Glover . . . each of the survivors of the noble houses she met with her gaze.

'When the first Long Night came, they allied with the children of the forest to drive the Others back north, and when the Andals arrived, the Kings of Winter held them off at Moat Cailin. The North belonged to the First Men, and their kin, for generations. Until the dragons came.'

She paused for effect, and her gaze settled on a young man towards the back of the room. He fidgeted, still unaccustomed to court. _A boy,_ she thought, _the same age Rickon would be now._

She did not recognise this child, and with a pang of guilt she wondered who his father and brothers had been, and which battles they had died in to leave the boy as the eldest survivor of their house. _Good men who died fighting for Robb, and Jon, and me._

'The Targaryen conquerors ensured our knees remained bent for three hundred years. But the Iron Throne is no more.'

A couple of the men smirked and nodded.

She imagined Ser Brienne watching her from the benches. Her dear friend and sworn shield - the unsuspecting knight in shining armour from her childhood fantasies - should have been here to see her crowned as queen. But Brienne had fulfilled her promise to Lady Catelyn, and Sansa did not need protecting any longer. Instad, the knight's duties lay south, with Catelyn's last surviving son.

'A Stark King now sits in King's Landing,' Sansa went on, although the words still seemed wrong. _He should be here, in Winterfell._ 'Bran the Broken has agreed to recognise the North's independence. Our freedom, my lords, is from this day forth uncontested. We serve a southron throne no more.'

The hall erupted into cheers, and Sansa waited for quiet before she proceeded.

'Yet our freedom has come at no small cost. The North has fought valiantly and lost bitterly in wars that went on for too many years, wars that stole too many lives . . .'

It was becoming more difficult to get the words out, even though she had practiced on the journey from King's Landing.

She looked down at her lap, and for the first time since donning her crown, she felt its weight bend with her. _I must be strong like Robb._

In her mind, she could see a feast, with platters upturned on the table. The floor was slick with spilled wine, and something that was darker; a thicker red that soaked into the clothes of the men slumped on the floor. She saw a head of curly auburn hair, resting on the floor, but it no longer was dusted with snow.

_I can't think of that now._

She forced herself to focus on the crimson weirwood leaves she had embroidered on the ivory sleeves of her coronation gown, waiting for the horrors flicking through her mind to subside. When they passed, she cleared her throat and continued.

'We have bled for false rulers, and we have suffered great betrayals at the hands of our own men. And as winter came riding down through the Wolfswood, we looked into the face of death and said _not today_.'

The men uttered a solemn round of _Ayes_. A few patted each other's backs, grimacing, most likely recalling their near loss in this very castle.

Sansa recalled how Arya had given her those words for the speech, on their way back north from King's Landing. Impressed by her younger sister's wisdom and eloquence, it had suddenly hit Sansa how woefully unprepared she would be without any friends by her side in Winterfell.

 _You're their hero_ , Sansa had begged her. _You saved Westeros. Why don't you come home and rule the North with me?_

But that had never been Arya's way. _I want to go find out what lies west_ , Arya had replied gently, _like Queen Nymeria and her ten thousand ships, remember?_

Of course Sansa remembered, in another life, two girls tucked up next to each other in bed, asking Old Nan to tell them the story of Queen Nymeria. They would listen wide-eyed as Nymeria, exiled from Essos, led her ten thousand ships west to land in Dorne. It was the littler girl's favourite story and she would swear _I'll travel the world some day too_. But the tale unsettled the older sister. She would always shiver at the bit when Nymeria burned her ships so she could never return home.

Sansa had tried her best to make peace with her sister's decision. Instead of ten thousand ships, Sansa gave a parting gift of her best ship with the Stark sigil sewn into the sail. She had stood at the docks and watched the wolf bounding off into the ink blue sea.

Sitting on the throne now, the Queen hoped for nothing more than to glance over and see the glimmer of Needle's hilt in the alcove tucked into the wall.

But there was no glint of a sword, and no girl lurking in the shadows. Nowadays all that the castle's corners offered was soot and rubble.

She sighed, and grazed her thumb over the wolf's head carved into the throne's arm. 'My ancestral home lays burnt and broken,' she said thickly. _And all I've been left with is ghosts._

'If Winterfell was a body, its bones may lie broken and blistered, but its blood . . . the water that pumps through these walls . . . that still runs hot.'

A couple men nodded solemnly.

She looked once more at the red embroidery on her white sleeve, and pulled the heavy fabric up slightly. She laid her fingers on her exposed wrist, and felt the warm pulse of her blood.

'When I went south, they killed my wolf. They tried to marry the Stark out of me. But I am a northerner through and through. Wolf blood . . . and the blood of the First Men still courses through my veins. And it is in your blood too.'

Sansa met the sorrowed stare of Lord Reed for a moment, and she smiled at him softly. She looked upon the rest of her men, but no matter how hard she tried to see them, every other face started to look like someone she used to know.

 _Do they see ghosts in their dreams too?_ She wondered, gaze sweeping over the sea of dark, northern heads. _I cannot be the only one to carry my grief with me._

This was her coronation, she was meant to be happy. So did her chest tighten every time she saw a dark curl that could have been her father's?

She longed for her brothers - all of them, even Theon and Jon. She longed for her sister, and her parents. She wished she could take back every unkind thing she had said as a child. She wished they could see her now, and tell her that they were proud of her, and that she could be strong.

But these were not her family sitting in the Great Hall. These were her men, and she owed them a coronation.

'We are here today,' she went on, 'because even in your darkest hours, while your homes burned and your brothers bled, you chose honour. We are here because you remained loyal to the Starks of Winterfell, even when there were no Starks left alive in Winterfell. We are here, alive and free, because you trusted in your Queen to win the North's freedom at last.'

She looked in Lord Manderly's eyes and thought she saw wetness there. He was an old man now, much more haggard than she had ever remembered him as a child. He dipped his head at her slowly, his mouth still.

In this moment, she felt old too. Her bones ached with tiredness, and all she wanted to do was go up to her chambers and curl up under the furs on her bed, falling asleep for a year.

She had won the game, she realised, and it had all but sapped the life from her.

 _My duties are far from over_ , she reminded herself.

'While our scars may never heal, know that we will rebuild a strong and independent kingdom. And on my honour as a Stark, I will do my best to see that your loyalty and sacrifices shall be rewarded.'

The Queen rose slowly, and with a clang of metal and scraping of wood, her men rose with her.

'Tonight, a feast shall be held to celebrate the coronation, a free North, and the coming of Spring,' she announced.

Wyman Manderly drew his sword once again and pointed upwards. 'The Queen in the North!' he called gruffly.

The other northmen followed, drawing their swords and in tandem shouting: 'The Queen in the North!'

 

*

Once upon a time, a little girl sped through the castle, brimming with the news of her recent victory in a courtyard game. She clutched the grey and white flag in her arms to show her lord father the proof of her win.

The servants outside his solar turned her away, telling her that Lord Eddard had left a while ago for the Godswood, or the Great Hall.

She checked the Great Hall first. Stood outside with frost underfoot, she peered through a crack in the door, where a sliver of light spilled in. But he was nowhere to be found.

Hesitantly, she stepped across the hall and found herself in front of her father's empty seat. It stood taller than she, made of a wood as dark as charcoal. She traced her fingers along the carvings of howling wolves, and slowly sank to sit at the foot of the chair.

It was getting colder, so she wrapped the flag around her shoulders like a cloak. She thought about how one day she may have her wedding feast here, wrapped up in a cloak embroidered with her lord husband's sigil. Her father would raise a cup of wine to their health and her mother would kiss her cheek, proud of her achievement.

Sansa rested her cheek against the wood and closed her eyes. The thrill from the game had passed now, and tiredness was finally catching up with her.

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this almost immediately after watching the finale, because I couldn't get the coronation scene out of my head. 
> 
> To be queen is everything I wanted for Sansa and everything she deserves! And yet I couldn't help but think how bittersweet it would have been, not having any of her loved ones around her at this colossal moment in her life, and in Westerosi history. I was imagining how exhausting it would feel to finally win this long, cruel game of thrones, like you just finished a marathon, except you can't sit down to rest, because you are now responsible for an entire kingdom. 
> 
> So I tried to encapsulate a bunch of these thoughts for my own sense of closure, but this proved to be a much more difficult piece to write stylistically (no conversation! Just one long ass speech and a lot of wistful interrupting memories!) So the 2000-something words I wrote a couple hours after watching the finale were completely chopped up and changed to read a little clearer. There's still a lot more to say that I had to cut out, which I'm considering writing in a different fic


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